All That's Best of Dark and Bright
by pennytree
Summary: In the 31st century, Mon El and his Legion vet a potential new recruit who's perfect for the team, but not for his equilibrium. Post-Supergirl, crossover only in the vaguest sense. Loosely connected to my Tesseract stories of Bonnie/Kai from TVD.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.**

 **Notes:** Sorry in advance to Bonkai peeps for adding yet another fic to my catalog of unfinished ones. I just couldn't resist, even though in this fic Bonkai's sort of bllink-and-you-miss-it. Super sorry about that. Also sorry to Supergirl fans because this probably won't be for you guys. Had no choice but to load under SG for lack of a Legion TV show (except in my dreams where Kat Graham is Shadow Lass). I don't watch SG, just occasionally browse promo shots of Mon El and the Legion. Most of this fic's based on comics canon, with heavy tweaking. Basically it's a mongrel plot bunny that's taken over my life for now. So, yea, have I mentioned in this story the amazing Kat Graham plays Shadow Lass? I made a cover. It kinda sucks, I'm not an artist (sorry #4). But it's there for reference. :) Hope you enjoy.

 **1**

Twelve years since first waking up in the pod after the destruction of Daxam. Five years after his divorce. Four years post-return to the 31st century and leadership of the Legion.

Life is fantastic demolishing bad guys, saving the people, and even occasionally coaxing the bad guys into switching teams and saving people themselves.

Mon El can't think of any other time in his life when he's been this…fulfilled. The rush of his best highs during his hedonistic life as a Daxamite prince will never compare to the look on an old man's face when one of the Legionnaires flies him to safety from hybrid alien attack number 218. Or the heartfelt gratitude of a struggling city mayor in a rumpled suit, happy for another day the sun rises over his hobbled but still hopeful city.

In the dark, on the rare nights when he's actually home and in his bed attempting to sleep, Mon El spares moments indulging in the treacherous sense that even at their most sublime, his two serious past relationships can't hold a candle to the joy he feels now, being alone…and worthy. Comfortable in his own skin, assured in his skill and powers, respected as a leader.

And celibate. For two years. If his friends from his old life in Daxam could see him now, they'd think this was his worst nightmare. They'd be wrong. Leadership and celibacy and Legionnairing is all he needs after all. He believes it, wholeheartedly.

Sometimes, just from the strange giddiness of it all, he laughs randomly in the dark, whistling to the shadows in his room.

-o-O-o-

The Fatal Five were contained in a prison dimension, the United Planets Senator explains via the projection screen. But the Sun Eater came along presenting a greater threat and the Fatal Five negotiated their freedom by mutual agreement. If they killed the Sun Eater, they would be released on probation in the Barren Earths, never to return to the United Planets.

Weeks after sending the Fatal Five on their mission, the United Planets realize their error.

The Legion find the Sun Eater, disoriented but still supremely capable of wrecking a portion of a planet out in one of the Barren Earths. Wrapped in green fire and leeching heat and energy from the area around him, the humanoid creature is alone. No sign at all of the Fatal Five, though the Sun Eater seems to convulse and spout garbled curses at their mention. Ultimately, it's Ultra Boy, Shrinking Violet, and Phantom Girl who fly around at their wits' end distracting the Sun Eater, while Tellus and Cosmic Boy immobilize him just long enough for Mon El's heat vision to overload the creature. From an orbiting satellite, Brainiac 5 shoots a modified accelerator beam to end the battle, crystallizing the Sun Eater's shattered parts before it can reassemble.

The Legionnaires never intend to kill, but the frozen particles of anti-matter which comprise the remains of the Sun Eater are difficult to neutralize safely enough for imprisonment.

"How do you jail a regenerative being that eats suns?" Brainiac 5 asks the group, in a rare moment of being caught stumped.

They witness the random scattered matter of what was formerly known as the Sun Eater drift against the desert. Soon enough the silver dust storms form nearby, threatening all in its path. It's a phenomenon unique to the planet, known to be fatal if caught in its crosshairs. Mon El and the other Legion find cover in the caves from the storm, because despite many of them sporting invulnerable skin and metahuman strength, nobody wants to test how their lungs might stand up to silver dust exposure.

They aren't long in the cave before an unholy gloom settles the already dim, irregular walls. His teammates' voices shrink away. Eventually they're totally absent, as is his air supply. Briefly, he realizes this is how it is to drown: choked for air, the world turning black as his lungs fill with water and his body sinks into sluggishness. It's a darkness so complete and terrifying the universe has to be ending, constricting back into nothing and trapping him in its radius. He wants to scream but can't. A foreign taste fills his mouth, a little like blood because he has chewed his tongue to shreds in the agony of this blackness. But no—he recalls another taste even now, of bile and something else that brings to mind that day when the guard woke him and he saw his planet crumbling through the windows of his palace room.

It's foreign to his palette now because of its absence for so long: stark fear, the kind that leads to madness.

At the last moment, his flailing hand connects with a jagged piece of rockwall. With a jolt, Mon El remembers that he's not surrounded by water but stuck in a cave. Instinct tells him to punch, though half a millisecond upon connecting with something warm, soft with hard edges, and most definitely resembling a body—he pulls back and uses the strength of his punch to disable rather than destroy.

A startled grunt reaches his ears. A sharp heel lands in his gut, knocking the wind out of him. In his confusion, he tries to fly but stumbles through a kick instead, which is quickly slapped away by a pair of hands too quick for his present state. He parries again, regaining some more of his senses. His unknown assailant counters all his moves with lightning reflexes that please the part of him relishing the challenge. The blackness seems to throb in warning, giving him another momentary lapse of self, just enough for an arm to whip out, wrap around his neck and shoulders, and overturn him bodily.

He lands in a heap, somehow knowing even in his addled state that he's landed at the feet of his opponent.

"Harmless," he croaks in Saturnian, opting like the tactician he's become for a merciful outcome not for himself, but for the other Legionnaires. "I'm Mon-El. With the Legion. We're here to help. Don't hurt my friends."

He thinks it can't possibly get worse, but the absolute void in which he's trapped somehow constricts around him, sharpening enough to dig, though it doesn't break his skin.

Then a scoff follows.

"Hurt _your_ friends? Your people bring monsters to this planet. Scores of _my_ people have fled."

The rage in her voice chills him, as does her accusation.

"We didn't bring them. You won't believe me until you see for yourself. My teammate Tellus can show you. We can help. You see what happened to the Sun Eater out there. If the other invaders are still here, we'll find them."

In the long silence, her breathing reaches his ears. She sounds winded; the amount of power she exerts to keep him in place must be monumental. He has quite literally flattened mountains before.

"What are you?" they both suddenly ask, in unison. Her tiny gasp instantly afterwards coaxes out his smile, and he wears it in secret, there in that yawning abyss.

He waits for another interminable length of time before the blackness reveals more sounds, the familiar grunts and pained groans of his teammates rejoining them. The absolute dark recedes in stages, as a single lantern lighting the cave shines bright like a star and stings his eyes. He and the other Legion squint up at their captor, struggling to regain their bearings and vision.

She's a hypothermic elf, is his first thought when he finally registers her appearance: blue skin, ear tips pointed up that makes her look curious as she stares back at them all. Mon El after years of leadership is aware of his team's reaction, of Ultra Boy and Cosmic Boy dropping their jaws, and Phantom Girl's eyebrows meeting her hairline.

She _must_ be cold, though, because aside from her blue skin, she's wearing what looks like a plunging one-piece swimsuit and combat boots.

Tellus sums it up to the group telepathically: ~ Oh. My. ~


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

She shares who she is without pretense. Tasmia Benet Mallor is a native Talokian, a planet sparingly occupied like many of the Barren Earths. People come here to disappear, Mon El is aware. In this particular area, a small village stands at the very bottom of a misshapen crater, the craggy walls of a precipice at its back. Tasmia calls it home. She speaks proficient Saturnian, the official language of the United Planets. She has also heard vaguely of the Legion, while the team knows next to nothing of her and much else of Talok.

For centuries Talokians have lived in clans across the barren landscape: underground, or in caves, or resilient cliff-backed villages built to withstand the silver dust storms. Some of the tribes themselves developed an innate quasi-immunity to the storms. From his satellite monitor, Brainiac theorizes it's part of why Tasmia's skin is blue. What's poison to other Talokians is merely a trigger for adaptation in Tasmia and others like her.

"Not adaptation," Tasmia protests. "It's a gift from our Ancestors."

Talokian natives from the darkest caves are blue, she explains, like their ancestors. It's from this pool of the population that a mystical group called the Diviners select the next generation of Chosen. Trained during childhood in the art of battle, the Chosen prepare for the day they enter the Shadow Caves to determine worthiness in wielding the power. Eventually every Chosen seeks out an encounter with the Ancestors in the most ancient caves in Talok, until the next Shadow Champions emerge, who then go about their lives in service to the people.

To Mon El, it's a dash of child labor sprinkled with magic and coated in slavery. Three of the things he detests most in the world.

"The Sun Eater was already weak when I found it," Tasmia says. "I left it to chase its three captors."

"There should be five," Mon El tells her.

"A ship crashed half a moon ago. They all must have come from there. Aside from the Sun Eater, I only met three others. They evaded me when I fought them in the village."

She leads the team to the site of the Fatal Five's crash. Now in dark pants and a cloak, her figure moves solemnly through the wreckage while the Legion pick it apart for clues. Using their portable equipment, they transmit samples to their teammates at headquarters. HQ contact them shortly after with a positive energy signature on Mano, Tharok, and the Persuader.

"Maybe the Empress and Validus jumped ship on another planet," Phantom Girl says of the two missing members of the Fatal Five.

"We tracked their vessel," Brainiac reminds them all on the comm link. "After they caught the Sun Eater, they headed straight here."

"The Eye of Ekron is capable of anything," Mon El says. "They could have used that to escape on their own." With a flick of his wrist, he projects small images before Tasmia so she can confirm with her own eyes the group they're seeking. "Point out who you fought."

She indicates an armored man with bare hands glowing orange, a second man half-composed of cybernetic parts, and a third sporting an enormous battleaxe. Mano, Tharok, and the Persuader.

"I've never seen this woman with the green hair—"

"The Empress of Ekron," Cosmic Boy tells her. "That eye talisman she wears makes her more one of the most dangerous in the group."

"And what of the other creature, the one-"

"With a face only a mother could love?" Mon El nods. "Validus. Super strength, invulnerability. He's her lackey, does everything she says except when he has a temper tantrum."

"You didn't see these two at all in the village?" questions Shrinking Violet.

Tasmia shakes her head.

"Does the village still stand?" Mon El asks, almost dreading her answer.

"We've served as the wastebasket of the United Planets for ages. Much of Talok has learned to cope."

Before she leads them to the village, they leave Tellus with the Diviners in their Sanctuary, not far from the cave the team hid inside. With his tail, enormous psychic third eye, and reptilian skin, Tellus would only alarm the already-spooked Talokians. Preferring to keep a low-profile, he tells Mon El he'll instead glean what he can from the Diviners.

Tasmia guides the rest of the Legion into the village. With jagged rock walls buttressing it, and boasting a handful of squat, flat-roofed structures, taking it all in lasts only moments. When she tells them the Talokians usually gather here for business, Mon El wonders if everyone works only a small portion of the day.

If it has seen better days, it must have been eons ago. Outside of the cracked roads and torn buildings left in the wake of recent battle, an air of old neglect clings to the black windows and faded storefronts. The handful of natives that remain stare at them suspiciously.

Few of the Talokians here are blue like Tasmia, instead running the gamut in shades of peach and brown. All are hardier than he expected to find, these residents who stayed behind despite the evacuation orders. Mon El sees nothing in their gazes that indicate they're housing any criminal refugees. Soon they all drift off and disappear back to whatever hideouts serve as home.

With night looming, the village feels like an abandoned specter.

"What do you guys do for fun?" quips Ultra Boy.

Tasmia points down the worn path. Further down are ragged stumps of what once must have been a building just like any other in the village. Because there is little else in its immediate radius, it stands forlorn in its destruction. The damage is fresh, Mon El notes, and reminiscent of the kind of havoc the Five have wreaked across the galaxy in other cities in other planets.

"That _was_ our outpost," she says. "The barkeeper fled with the others."

"If that's all you need," Ultra Boy says, clapping Mon El's shoulder. "Captain here was once upon a time a bartender."

Jo Nah's flippancy draws a collective wince from the rest of the team. No one follows up on his suggestion to find drinks, though beneath his teammate's bravado, Mon El hears the edge. They've traveled non-stop for days tracking down the Five.

Tasmia eyes them measuredly.

"You're welcome to stay at the Sanctuary," she says finally, as if she's read Mon El's thoughts. Paranoia grips him as he glances at her.

"There a bar there?" Ultra Boy presses, which earns him a shoulder shove from Phantom Girl.

"Just beds," Tasmia replies curtly, then after a pause, she adds, "though if the High Priest likes you, he'll offer you ceremonial wine."

Mon El's lips quirk at Ultra Boy's grimace.

-o-O-o-

They return to the Sanctuary, a small settlement carved into a rock quarry overlooking the Shadow Caves where they first met Tasmia. She tells them the Diviners have dwelt here for generations, as priests and priestesses of the Shadows. Then she vanishes, engulfed by the darkness that envelops the walls.

Much of the place is bare and quiet. Robed figures move silently, their black eyes glassy and luminescent as they pass. Beneath the robes the Diviners are nearly nude, an attribute Mon El realizes is common among this group of atypical mysticists.

It makes him supremely grateful that Tasmia has even bothered at all with her pants.

They find Tellus sitting with the High Priest, whose stare is piercing blue, sharp. His olive skin retains elasticity and his quick movements broadcast more youth than the other Diviners, but his expression leaks weariness borne of long years. He hears their story out while sipping from a papery-leathered flask. No sign of gold or a raised dais greets them in the small chamber. Tasmia mentioned something of ceremonial wine, but there's little of pomp and circumstance in this broken down planet.

"The Legion has no authority on Talok," the High Priest announces, lacking censure in his tone. "But our Champion will work with you to find your outlaws."

Mon El braces for more. Now is usually the time when someone in charge looking to do the Legion a favor, requests one in return. Instead the High Priest offers Tellus some wine from his flask before leaving. Their teammate politely nods, downing a swallow in a gulp with his large maw, in a short spell of voracity.

"Guess you made a friend," Ultra Boy gripes when they're outside regrouping, well away from any eyes and ears of the Sanctuary.

~You can, also. Try less talking, more listening.~

Before they devolve into bickering, Mon El points out to the team the billow of smoke in the distance. He's had his eye on it since their arrival to the Sanctuary the first time, waiting for either Tasmia or the Diviners to mention it.

"What did you find out?" he asks Tellus.

~There are other Champions on world besides Tasmia but none who can be spared to help. She's on her own out here. She evacced the village, but it still took losses.~

The team takes this poorly, as if they themselves were responsible for sending the Fatal Five and the Sun Eater here. For lack of time, instead of talking them out of their funk he urges them to rest, directing them to their sleeping quarters, a cramped room with a series of stone beds covered in straw mats. Waiting until they fall asleep, Mon El slips outside again, flying off.

Brainiac is in his ear, on the other end of the commlink and ready to record findings at Mon El's order.

"Shrinking Violet would have been more suitable for this recon," comes his wry voice.

"Not unprepared she wouldn't." He wants to add, _not against Tasmia_.

Mon El suppresses a shiver in remembrance of her darkfield. It's that and the lack of obstacles in their hunt on Talok that raises his hackles and drives him alone to where the smoke beckons.

The smell warns him before anything. The burn in his nose, extra rancid, slows his progress. He's seen people burned alive before, so his gut readies itself as he touches down at the edge of a small hole. A pyre recently died there in its center. What's left for Mon El to survey are embers and what others who wouldn't know better would call ash and tiny sticks.

Tasmia stands at its edge. Her cloak streams out around her as shadows coat her hands, power streaming out in a single arc. The human remains in a pile move with the shadows, engulfed in it briefly. Mon El knows enough about the ancient process of cremation to see that she's using her darkfield to contain the remains and pulverize the remaining brittle bones to more powder-like consistency.

He watches transfixed as the bleak parade in the air ends in a waiting, unadorned urn resting near his feet, which seals shut under prodding of her darkfield.

"Since you're there." Tasmia addresses him without looking, her chin tipped to the urn.

He follows her to another, smaller quarry, this one bordering a small lake. Its single chamber is cavernous, the entirety of its walls hollowed out. Over half of the hollow spaces are filled with cinerary urns, their color long faded from the collection of dust over time.

After placing the urn inside one hollow, next to several others with a similar shine, Tasmia bows her head, eyes closed. Her long lashes are restful against her cheeks, her mouth soft. She looks innocent this way.

It tightens his jaw in anger, and drives him nearly out of this Talokian columbarium. But rather than leave, he turns aside and waits.

Just outside its entrance, they stand at opposite sides and stare out at the village in the distance.

"How many?" he asks her.

"Six in the village. Eight outside of it, halfway to the border of the next."

"I'm sorry, Tasmia."

"You didn't kill them."

It's a similar line to what he might have used on his team earlier, when their guilt was clear on their faces.

"Burning and burying the dead's part of the Shadow Champion's duties?" Mon El asks after a long silence.

"We have keepers," she says. "But—"

"They evacuated."

It's the single most uncomfortable conversation he's ever had with anyone he's only just met and who isn't out to kill him, his team, or end the world. What Mon El realizes then with precise focus is that when they've apprehended the Fatal Five and all of this is over, he and the Legion need a meeting with the United Planets, to urge the Senators to retread expanding proper containment zones in existing UP jurisdiction, instead of using the Barren Earths.

"Your home shouldn't be a wastebasket," he tells her.

"It's unbearable," Tasmia cuts in, rolling her eyes. "Your pity. I'd rather not have to wear it, if you don't mind."

"Sorry," he says again, feeling lame for the first time in maybe years.

"You're better off saving your pity."

"For?" he asks, gaze sharpening on her.

She pushes off the wall and stalks past him, her cloak billowing out behind her.

"Your Five. I'm to help you find them. What the High Priest failed to mention is what happens after."

* * *

 **Note:** Thanks for the feedback, guys! Much love to ya.


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